BECAUSE OUR HOUSE contains a small yet fully functional human, we automatically receive, by mail, roughly 25 pounds of parenting magazines per month. I don't know how the magazine people find us; maybe they have an orbiting satellite that detects the roof-penetrating aroma rays emitted by used diapers. All I know is, these magazines keep coming to our house, filled with articles for clueless new parents, with headlines like: "Which Specific Gender Is Your Baby? 23 Ways To Tell" "461 Common Household Items That Could Easily Wind Up In Your Baby's Nose" "38 Ways To Spruce Up An Unattractive Baby Using Big Hats" "Whatever Way You Installed Your Baby's Car Seat, It's Wrong" "The Colicky Child: A Doctor Explains Why Heroin Is Not the Answer.

Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs made his triumphant return to ESPN's “First Take” on Tuesday. During his last appearance before the Ravens beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh, he battled with talking head Skip Bayless about Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco. Two months later, Suggs, Flacco and the Ravens are the AFC's No. 2 seed. Suggs briefly talked about the team's 12-4 regular season (“we're still sitting pretty”), the Week 15 loss to San Diego Chargers (“it was a reality check”)

A computer glitch had forced Chris Dudley to put aside his electronic wind synthesizer -- brought to Sandy Plains Elementary School in Baltimore County in hopes of dazzling the fourth-graders -- and to pick up his trombone instead.This time the Bach would have to be performed the old-fashioned way.Mr. Dudley, a pony-tailed associate principal trombone of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, stood before about 30 students, most of them in chairs, some of them seated on rug remnants on the floor, and ascended to a high, pleasant place.

Election precinct 1-001 in Woodlawn hardly registers a second glance on a map of Baltimore County Council districts, clustered among some 200 others. But since it is home to one of the county's largest employers — the Social Security Administration headquarters — a recommendation to move the precinct to another district has raised the stakes in what was expected to be a ho-hum redistricting plan. The agency has thousands of workers and even more in contractors and subcontractors.

WASHINGTON -- In 1914, early in a career that established him as America's greatest jurist never to reach the Supreme Court, Learned Hand, a believer in democracy and hence in judicial restraint, denounced judicial activism by conservative judges who used the Constitution's guarantee of ''due process of law'' to overturn laws that regulated economic transactions.This was ''substantive due process,'' the tendentious doctrine that many government actions distasteful to judges can be baldly declared to be the results of constitutionally impermissible processes.

Women go to great lengths to combat that oh-so-unfeminine facial hair. They pluck, wax and tweeze. Now they can even thread. This trendy Eastern alternative -- which uses a looped thread to yank out hairs at the root -- is an alternative to other near-medieval methods. "I'm a convert," says Linda West, 41, who has come to Usha Beauty Salon in Parkville to get her eyebrows threaded. "I'll never have them waxed again." It may just be a matter of time until threading becomes even hotter than waxing.

Permanent makeup -- color applied to the facial skin to resemble lip liner, eyeliner or eyebrows -- is among the trickiest of tattoos to remove. Just ask the woman whose lips turned black and eyebrows yellow. The case, reported by a team of dermatologists last year in the journal Dermatologic Surgery, was an extreme example of what can go wrong when doctors use lasers to attempt to remove certain colors of tattoos, such as the reds and browns used in permanent makeup. Such tattoos are popular among women who want to save time applying makeup or who want to appear as if they have makeup on all the time.

By Elsa Klensch and Elsa Klensch,Los Angeles Times Syndicate | November 30, 1995

I am an accountant and recently joined an Italian company that manufactures fine fabrics. They are extremely conservative in their styling, but they are trying to update their look.Next month I am going to Milan for a meeting and would like to wear an outfit that reflects the current mood of Italian fashion. Can you give me some ideas?Both color and shape are important in the fall Italian collections. Your best bet is a suit with a fitted jacket and a full or flared skirt. The new colors are clear so choose one that suits your skin tone.

State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein could have easily avoided the unfavorable fall-out ("Bernstein raised eyebrows with email on court case," June 3) over his errant email message if he had simply complied with Fuller's Three Rules of Email Correspondence. For example: Rule 1: Compose every email like you would talk on a crowded elevator. Rule 2: Check and re-check every email for grammar, punctuation, relevance and accuracy. Rule 3: Don't send it! Strict adherence to Fuller's Rules will absolutely, positively prevent your embarrassment from having excerpts of your thoughtless e-missive rehashed in the local media.

JILLY'S, 1012 Reisterstown Road, Pikesville. Open Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to midnight and Sunday noon to 10 p.m. Phone: 653-9029.In an old episode of "M*A*S*H," Hawkeye (Alan Alda) goes to great lengths to ship to Korea an order of barbecued ribs from a Chicago eatery. Remember? He never gets to eat them, but the show perfectly illustrates the true rib lover's sometimes insatiable addiction.There's something about the tangy, sweet taste of a good ribs sauce.

I almost made it through my workday without having to blog about someone talking about Joe Flacco, but unfortunately, Steelers safety Ryan Clark was asked on Tuesday to give his take on the Ravens quarterback. Clark took it easy on Flacco, passing on an easy opportunity to make fun of Flacco’s facial hair and saying that he is a good quarterback who is “still trying to take that next step to become an elite quarterback.” “You know what? I really don’t pay that much attention to Joe Flacco or the Baltimore Ravens for it to be my concern,” said Clark, who laughed when he heard LaMarr Woodley’s comments for the first time when two Pittsburgh radio hosts brought them up . “The times that we play them, I’m excited to play them.

State's Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein could have easily avoided the unfavorable fall-out ("Bernstein raised eyebrows with email on court case," June 3) over his errant email message if he had simply complied with Fuller's Three Rules of Email Correspondence. For example: Rule 1: Compose every email like you would talk on a crowded elevator. Rule 2: Check and re-check every email for grammar, punctuation, relevance and accuracy. Rule 3: Don't send it! Strict adherence to Fuller's Rules will absolutely, positively prevent your embarrassment from having excerpts of your thoughtless e-missive rehashed in the local media.

Del. Guy Guzzone has $100,274 in campaign cash put aside, likely enough to pay for another run for the General Assembly, but he said his annual home pizza party should boost that total by at least $35,000 as he ponders a run for higher office. "I have not made a decision what I'm going to run for, but county executive is high on the list of possibilities," he said Monday. Thursday evening, his tune didn't change as he spoke to about 200 people, many of them donors who filled his driveway, garage and front lawn eating free pizza.

Half-man, half-horse and altogether drunk, the Preakness' newest pitchman, introduced Tuesday, is a "party manimal" with one job: reassuring young people that this year's infield festivities will indeed be rowdy, raunchy and booze-soaked. Kegasus, a centaur with a nipple ring, body hair and ample beer gut, is the centerpiece of the new ad campaign for Maryland's leg of the Triple Crown. Starting this week, he'll be spreading his hard-partying message on television, radio and social media outlets that cater to the 21- to 40-year-olds the race hopes to reach.

First, a man wearing a sandwich board advertising a new cash-for-gold store raised eyebrows along historic Ellicott City's eclectic Main Street. Now, a laborer is emptying debris from a former bakery that in May, according to a small sign in the window, will become a Subway sandwich franchise — the first chain store in recent memory. It's all very disturbing to some of the more protective independent local merchants, craftspeople and visitors who come to the old mill town for its quirky appeal.

On a steamy Saturday afternoon in July, Democrats at a fundraiser for incumbent Del. Frank S. Turner welcomed Howard County Executive Ken Ulman to the event at the high-rise Waterside Condominium in Columbia. As Ulman mingled and spoke to the group on a pool patio, his county police driver/bodyguard waited nearby, with an unmarked county patrol car parked outside. Some might not take issue with a need for security for the county's top elected official in a turbulent age when irrational behavior can erupt any time, but how far should that protection go?

Even though more women are choosing to keep their birth names after marriage, the practice still tends to inspire furrowed eyebrows, shock and even horror among people they encounter every day, according to a 12-year study recently completed by Tom Murray, a professor of English at Kansas State University.Murray, whose study also examined perception of women who use the courtesy title Ms. as opposed to Mrs. or Miss, polled 10,472 people in 12 Midwestern states.In one of his scenarios, a man and woman had just married, and the woman had decided to keep her last name.

Sometimes an eight-cent bumper sticker can speak volumes.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has been distributing a bumper sticker for his re-election bid in the tri-colors long associated with African-American pride. "Mayor Schmoke Makes Us Proud," it reads.Politicians have always made unique appeals to their own and to other ethnic groups. The Italians are awash in blarney on St. Patrick's Day and gentile pols stress pro-Israel positions in the Jewish neighborhoods. So what's wrong with Baltimore's first elected black mayor reaching out to voters in this majority black city?

By Peter Hermann and Peter Hermann,peter.hermann@baltsun.com | September 9, 2009

Soon, when you belly up to the bar at Shirley's Honey Hole on East Oliver Street, police will know when you've had your first, second and even third beer. From three miles away at the Citiwatch command center on Howard Street, they will be able to watch you buy a drink for the woman on the corner stool, stumble to the bathroom and challenge someone to a brawl. As part of a settlement to keep police from padlocking her establishment as a "public nuisance" linked to drug dealing and violence, the owner agreed Tuesday to install surveillance cameras not only outside but also inside her bar, complete with a live video feed to police.

By Joe Burris and Joe Burris,joseph.burris@baltsun.com | September 15, 2008

The school of tiny, metallic-gray fish chomped away at Michelle Lee's bare feet; some seemed to enjoy her heels and insoles while others jockeyed for the chance to nibble between her toes. "It tickles!" exclaimed the Alexandria, Va., resident between giggles, her jerky motions making splashes in the water-filled glass tank. Her laughter spread among already lively customers at Yvonne Hair, Nail and Tan Salon in Alexandria, where most everyone is getting a kick out of the latest pedicure craze: imported fish that eat away dead skin cells, leaving feet soft and smooth.